parapsychology

"...parapsychology is the
only realm of objective inquiry in which the phenomena are all
negatively defined, defined in terms of ruling out normal explanations." James Alcock (2003)

Parapsychology is the search for
evidence of paranormal
phenomena, such as ESP and psychokinesis.
Most scientists try to explain observed and observable phenomena. Parapsychologists try
to observe unexplainable phenomena. All the other sciences have led us
away from superstition and magical thinking,
while parapsychology has tried to find a scientific basis for such things
as
divination and
mediumship.

Much parapsychology today attempts
to find statistical oddities that can't be explained either by the laws of
chance or by any other known natural causes. Parapsychologists
assume in such cases that they have found
evidence for psi.

Scientific methodology in this field dates from at least
1882 at the founding of the Society for Psychical Research in London,
which continues to flourish. Its initial members sought to distinguish
psychic phenomena from spiritism, and to
investigate mediums and their activities. They
studied automatic
writing, levitation, and reports of ectoplasmic and poltergeist
activity. In America, Joseph Banks Rhine (1895-1980) conducted
psi experiments at Duke University in the 1930s.
His work continues at the Rhine Research Center
and at various labs across the country where experiments have concentrated
principally on extrasensory
perception (ESP), psychokinesis,
remote viewing, and astral projection.
There are at least half a dozen peer-reviewed journals of parapsychology.
However, research in this area has been characterized by deception, fraud,
and incompetence in setting up properly controlled experiments and
evaluating statistical data (Alcock 1990; Gardner 1981; Gordon 1987;
Hansel 1989; Hines 1990; Hyman 1989; Park 2000; Randi 1982). For a short
history of psi research, see
my essay on the
subject.

Psi researchers often find evidence for psi, but a
yearlong study done by the United States Air Force Research Laboratories
(the VERITAC study, named after the computer used) was unable to verify
the existence of ESP. A carefully designed study by Richard C. Sprinthall and Barry S. Lubetkin published in the Journal of Psychology
(vol. 60, pp. 313-18) found no evidence of ESP. Some parapsychologists,
e.g.,
Louie Savva and Susan Blackmore,
have abandoned the search for psi after years of failing to find any
significant support for paranormal phenomena (Blackmore 1987,
2000).

Despite the fact that psychologists have been in the
forefront of paranormal studies, a study of 1,100 college professors in
the United States found that only 34% of psychologists believe that ESP is
either an established fact or a likely possibility. Comparable figures for
other disciplines are much higher: natural scientists (55%), social
scientists [excluding psychologists] (66%) and for academics in the arts,
humanities, and education (77%). Of the psychologists surveyed, 34%
believe psi is an impossibility, while only 2% of the other respondents
maintained this position (Wagner and Monnet 1979).

Parapsychologists who claim to have found positive results
often systematically ignore or rationalize their own studies if they don’t
support psi. Rhine discarded data that didn’t support his beliefs,
claiming subjects were intentionally getting answers wrong (psi-missing).
Many psi researchers allowed optional starting
and optional stopping. Many psi researchers have limited their research to
investigating parlor tricks (guessing the number or suit of a playing
card, or “guess what Zener card I am looking at”
or “try to influence this random number generator or the outcome of this
dice throw with your thoughts”).
Any statistical strangeness is attributed to paranormal events. Some
researchers, like Dean
Radin, write histories of the paranormal that make no mention of fraud
(Soal) or cheating (Project
Alpha) or embarrassing events like Rhine's declaring the horse
Lady Wonder to be
psychic. Radin is also fond of
meta-analysis, which
allows him to lump together numbers of studies of questionable worth and
do a statistical analysis that makes the data seem like gold. In his
latest book,
Entangled Minds: Extrasensory Experiences in a Quantum Reality,
Radin provides a mega-meta-analysis of over 1,000 studies on dream psi,
ganzfeld psi, staring,
distant intention, dice PK, and
RNG PK. He concludes that the odds against chance of getting these
results are 10104 against 1 (p. 276). He
comments that "there can be little doubt that something interesting is
going on" (p. 275). Maybe so, but what does it have to do with the
paranormal?

In
The Conscious Universe (1997), Radin uses statistics and
meta-analysis to
prove that psychic phenomena really do exist even if those who have the
experiences in the labs are unaware of them. Statistical data show that
the world has gone psychic, according to the latest generation of
parapsychologists. You may be unconscious of it, but your mind is
affecting random number generators all over the world as you read this.
The old psychic stuff - thinking about aunt Hildie moments before she
calls to tell you to bugger off - is now demonstrated to be true by
statistical methods that were validated in 1937 by Burton Camp and
meta-validated by Radin 60 years later when he asserted that meta-analysis
was the replication parapsychologists had been looking for. The only
difference is that now when you think of aunt Hildie it might be moments
before she calls her car mechanic and that, too, may be linked to activity
in your mind that you are unaware of.

Radin's latest book sees
entanglement as a key to understanding extrasensory phenomena.
Entanglement is a concept from quantum physics that refers to connections
between subatomic particles that persist regardless of being separated by
various distances. He notes that some physicists have speculated that the
entire universe might be entangled and that the Eastern mystics of old
might have been on to something cosmic. His speculations are rather wild
but his assertions are rather modest. For example: "I believe that
entanglement suggests a scenario that may ultimately lead to a vastly
improved understanding of psi" (p. 14) and "I propose that the fabric of
reality is comprised [sic] of 'entangled threads' that are consistent with
the core of psi experience" (p. 19). Skeptics might suggest that studying
self-deception and
wishful thinking would lead to a vastly improved
understanding of psi research and that being consistent with a model is a
minimal, necessary condition for taking any model seriously, but hardly
sufficient to warrant much faith.

From the standpoint of physics there seems to be a major
problem with the assumption and alleged discovery by some
parapsychologists that spatial distance is irrelevant to psi. Three of the
four known forces in nature weaken with distance.* Thus, as Einstein
pointed out in a letter to Dr. Jan Ehrenwald, “This suggests...a very
strong indication that a non-recognized source of systematic errors may
have been involved [in ESP experiments]” (Garder 1981, 153). The skeptic
would rather believe that ESP doesn’t exist than that there is some very
strong and powerful force that is undetectable even though we’re able to
detect what must be a much weaker force, gravity, without any trouble at
all.

Recently, the work of Charles Honorton and his ganzfeld
experiments have been put forth as examples of proper scientific studies whose
integrity cannot be doubted. Maybe. But the data from these experiments illustrate another
problem with much research in parapsychology: correlations don't establish causality.
Finding a correlation that is not what would be predicted by chance does
not establish a causal event. Nor does it establish that if it is a causal event, it
is a paranormal event. Furthermore, even if there is a causal event,
the correlation itself isn't of much use in determining what that event
consists of. What you think is cause may be the effect. Or, there may be
some third, unknown, factor which is causing the effect observed. Or, the
correlation may be due to chance, even if it is statistically unlikely in
a certain sense. Or the correlation may be illusory and due to an
experimenter
expectation effect rather than to any real causal event. The apparent chance correlation may actually be
statistically likely over the long run. So, the fact that a group of test
subjects identifies correctly which of four pictures someone else has seen
at a .36 rate when .25 is what chance predicts doesn't establish a causal
event. Nor does it, of course, establish ESP as the cause, if there is a
cause. The event may well be causal, but the real cause may be something
quite ordinary, such as fraud, unintentional cues, or some tendency to
bias in the subject matters selected by chance. If other researchers can
duplicate the results with more and more rigorous tests, then it will
become highly probable that causal events are being measured. Then, the
problem will be to find the cause. Maybe it will turn out to be a psychic
force hitherto undetected by physics, but this seems unlikely.

Parapsychologists, such as
Dean Radin, also point to the work of
Robert Jahn at Princeton
University as an example of strong evidence of
psychokinesis. Skeptics disagree. Physicist
Robert Park, for example, called Jahn's lab "an embarrassment to science."*
Jahn's work does seem to be a classic example of
pathological science,
except that rather than make observations at the threshold of perception,
Jahn and his team focused on statistical analysis at the threshold of
significance.